


Go Now To The Stone

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Amaranthine [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the events of <i>Awakening</i>, Velanna sees a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Now To The Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by dianjabla on Tumblr: Sigrun & Velanna.

It happens in the Deep Roads during a routine patrol.

Velanna’s fingers are painfully tight on Sigrun’s shoulder. She’s staring at the mouth of an unexplored tunnel—one of those that the Wardens have not charted yet. Clearing the Deep Roads is terribly slow work. Slow, and draining. They take it in shifts, but the week on feels three times longer than the two weeks off.

"I saw her," Velanna whispers. "I saw Seranni."

Velanna hasn’t spoken her sister’s name in years. Sigrun never assumed that Velanna had given her up, though, just that this grief—her grief—was too old and deep to speak of.

"Are you sure?" Sigrun asks. She hefts her torch and peers into the tunnel, but she sees nothing.

"She was just there a moment," Velanna says. Her voice trembles. "But it was her. It was her. I have to go after her.”

Her hand lifts from Sigrun’s shoulder, but Sigrun is quick enough to catch it, slim wrist tight in her calloused fingers. “Velanna,” she says, trying to be gentle. “If it was Seranni, why wouldn’t she have spoken to you?”

"Maybe she didn’t see me." Her eyes are wild. "Maybe she heard us and just thought—a group of Grey Wardens, she’d better hide." She tugs, trying to break Sigrun’s hold. "Let me go! If I wait too long, I’ll lose her!"

"What’s going on back there?" Nathaniel calls.

Velanna will not be shaken. Sigrun knows this about her friend—that Velanna is stubborn, and fierce, and relentless. And Sigrun doesn’t have enough time to persuade her. They are, it seems, out of time.

"I’m going with you," she says.

This does, at least, give Velanna pause. “You’re what?” she asks, turning from the mouth of the tunnel to look down and meet Sigrun’s eyes.

"I’m going with you," Sigrun repeats, unsheathing her daggers.

Velanna opens her mouth, presumably to argue, but Nathaniel calls out again. He will try to stop them. He lost the Warden-Commander this way, five years ago; Sigrun still feels the unbearable weight of that memory, Nathaniel returning from the Deep Roads without their leader.

"She just," he said, when they met him in the courtyard. He shifted from foot to foot, his bow still in his hands, his brow furrowed in some combination of rage and grief. "She said she saw  _something_ , I didn’t catch what it was, and she just took off—and she was just gone. We scoured the area for hours. We’ll go back, but…”

But they never found her, no matter how many scouting parties they led, no matter how many roads they cleared.

Sigrun smiles in Nathaniel’s direction—a last, wordless apology—and realization dawns on his features.

"Don’t you dare," he says, almost too quietly to be heard at this distance. "That’s an order, damn you—"

Sigrun turns toward the tunnel, toward Velanna. “It’s now, or not at all,” she says.

"Now," Velanna says, and they run.

* * *

They lose their unit almost immediately. One moment, Nathaniel’s bellows are echoing down the tunnel after them; the next, all is quiet. Velanna doesn’t seem perturbed by the nearly magical change. But she wouldn’t, would she, Sigrun thinks sadly. If it’s truly the Calling, then no logic could stand in the way of that sweet voice.

But it’s happened too early, just as it did for the Warden-Commander. Aren’t they supposed to have thirty years? Sigrun was counting on thirty years, and she’s only just now realized it, when two decades have been snatched from her fingertips. Ten years ago, she would have returned to the Deep Roads with her blades in her hands and a song in her heart, but ten years changes things.

They meet their first group of darkspawn about an hour after leaving their unit. They are veterans now, highly skilled, capable of sensing the beasts at some distance; they take the group by surprise, Velanna stunning and staggering while Sigrun leaps from target to target, finishing them off. They have fought together for so, so long, and this is an old, familiar dance.

"You don’t believe I saw her," Velanna says when the last darkspawn falls, breaking the silence of the last hour.

"No," Sigrun agrees, wiping her blades on the special cloth she keeps handy in her pack. "I don’t."

"You think it’s the Calling," Velanna continues, striding onward.

"What else could it be? The Architect—and your sister—vanished years ago. They both know what the Wardens would do to them if they returned."

"Then why did you come?" Velanna asks. "If I’m going to my Calling, then you’re going to your death."

Sigrun shrugs. “It’s overdue,” she says. “I’m Legion of the Dead, remember? I’ve been living on borrowed time.”

"You’re a Warden," Velanna replies. "Despite the jokes you like to make."

They smile at each other—Sigrun’s a grin, the corners of her eyes crinkled, Velanna’s small but genuine.

"I’ll miss you," Sigrun tells her. "Since I’ll be returning to the Stone, and you’ll be going to the Beyond."

Velanna’s smile goes crooked. “Perhaps the Ancestors and Falon’Din will make an exception for us.”

"They haven’t before," Sigrun jokes. "Why start now?"

* * *

They run out of food on what might be the third day—it’s hard to tell time in the Deep Roads—and take shelter by an underground stream. They build a fire with gathered twigs and sit, pointless. To eat anything out of that river would be to risk corruption. They will die first.

"Do you think Wardens can ignore their Calling?" Velanna asks.

"Supposedly," Sigrun says. "But you’ll die, anyway."

Velanna sighs, turning her face up to where the sun would be. “I should have done that. Better to die in the open air than this cage of stone.”

"You’ll just have to walk a little further, that’s all," Sigrun replies.

* * *

It’s the fourth group of darkspawn that does them in.

Sigrun is slow from hunger and thirst, and Velanna isn’t much better. A hurlock cuts past Sigrun and thrusts a sword through Velanna’s middle. While Sigrun is turning toward her, too late to help, a genlock gets her, too.

It takes everything she has left, but she throws one dagger to cut the throat of the hurlock as Velanna falls, and a second to behead the last genlock. Then her knees give out and she has to crawl, gasping for breath, to Velanna’s side.

She’s not gone yet. She reaches for Sigrun, eyes welling with angry tears. “I can’t,” she chokes out. The last of her magic sparks uselessly at her fingertips. “I can’t—”

"Shh." With one arm—the other’s occupied with a hand, holding in her own guts—Sigrun pulls Velanna until her head is in her lap, blond hair bedraggled and spread out over Sigrun’s thigh. "It’s…okay. It’ll be quick."

Velanna presses her own hands to her bleeding stomach. Red seeps through her mail, through her fingers. Her lips quiver with outrage. “We didn’t even find her,” she gasps. “I dragged you down here for nothing.”

"Not nothing." Sigrun tucks a lock of Velanna’s hair behind her ear. "For your Calling—and mine, too, it seems. They say there’s no song…sweeter." She tries to take a breath. It doesn’t quite fill her lungs. If it weren’t for the stone behind her, she wouldn’t be able to sit upright. "Don’t think about that. Remember when I kissed you in the courtyard, that first time?"

Velanna snorts. A trickle of blood comes out of her nose. “Child of stone. You were…so patient with me.”

"You require…a lot of patience." Sigrun smiles. The corners of her vision are going dark. "You were always worth it."

"I’ll find you," Velanna swears. She reaches up to grasp Sigrun’s hand. "I’ll see you soon."

What does dying feel like, to one already dead? It’s just as painful, just as visceral. She loses feeling in her legs, so she doesn’t feel Velanna go limp against her. Every labored breath aches. She wishes it were easy to let go, but her body fights to the last—every sluggish heartbeat a battle already lost.

"Soon," she agrees.


End file.
